“Before you takes ’em!” cried my uncle. “You’ll need every line-of-battle ship that Holland possesses to enable you to catch even a glimpse of the dollars afore all things are settled to my nephew Bill’s satisfaction.”
“Vhat vhas your name again, sir?”
“Captain Joseph Round.”
“You hov der looks of an honest man, Captain Round. You vould not rob me?”
“Not a ha-penny leaves this house,” said my uncle, “until Bill here has taken his share according to your skipper’s bond, and until he’s deducted the money that the captain has left by will, lawfully signed and witnessed.”
“I likes to see dot vill,” said Mynheer Tulp, speaking always very composedly, and occasionally snapping a look under his eyelids at one or the other of us.
I put the will on the table. He picked it up and read it. When he had read it he again grinned hideously, and said:
“Your name vhas Villiam Fielding?”
“Yes.”
“Und you benefit under dis vill to der amount of von tousand pounds?”